NYPD Arrests Journalist For Filming Officers During Arrest

NYPD officers arrested Amr Alfiky, a reporter with ABC and Reuters, after he filmed them taking another person into custody. The NYPD claimed he failed to identify himself as a journalist, but video demonstrates that Mr. Alfkiky did identify himself as a journalist in the moments leading up to his arrest (see story here). Filming police in public while they perform their duties as long as one is not interfering with them as they do so is not illegal, as courts have repeatedly held.

See Glik v Cunniffe, 655 F. 3d 78 (1st Cir. 2011). “In line with these principles, we have previously recognized that the videotaping of public officials is an exercise of First Amendment liberties. In Iacobucci v. Boulter, 193 F.3d 14 (1st Cir.1999), a local journalist brought a § 1983 claim arising from his arrest in the course of filming officials in the hallway outside a public meeting of a historic district commission. The commissioners had objected to the plaintiff’s filming. Id. at 18. When the plaintiff refused to desist, a police officer on the scene arrested him for disorderly conduct. Id. The charges were later dismissed. Id. Although the plaintiff’s subsequent § 1983 suit against the arresting police officer was grounded largely in the Fourth Amendment and did not include a First Amendment claim, we explicitly noted, in rejecting the officer’s appeal from a denial of qualified immunity, that because the plaintiff’s journalistic activities “were peaceful, not performed in derogation of any law, and done in the exercise of his First Amendment rights, [the officer] lacked the authority to stop them.” Id. at 25 (emphasis added).”

See also Smith v. City of Cumming (212 F. 3d 1332 (11th Cir. 2000); Fields v. City of Philadelphia, 862 F. 3d 353 (3d Cir. 2017).